Where is Your Inspiration Coming From?
To be perfectly honest, some days it’s far more difficult to find my inspiration to write than others. Because I define myself as a writer then it follows that I must write.
The ideas are plentiful, making oneself sit down and tackle whatever project that you are working on might not come quite so easily.
For myself, what works best is making a list of what I plan to do each day, writing down those things that I really must tend to but making working on my latest manuscript a priority. That’s easier said than done. Oh, I don’t have any trouble making lists and actually accomplishing most of what is on that list. But, for me, unless I start the writing early in the day it probably isn’t going to happen.
I will, no doubt, be writing, but not necessarily writing on my latest project. One of my biggest distractions is straying off to do promotion on whatever is my latest book out. That could mean comment on a blog where I’m featured or writing a new guest blog—which I’m doing right now. Sometimes curiosity about email or Facebook will draw me away for a moment, which might turn into an hour.
It is all writing, but not the kind of writing I need to be doing. When you are writing two books a year like I do, you need to keep your fanny planted firmly in the chair in front of the computer for at least a couple of hours a day concentrating on the work in progress.
Out now is Angel Lost from Oak Tree Press. I went on a month long blog tour for that book while working my next Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery. And to be perfectly honest, I’m also doing edits on the next Rocky Bluff P.D. crime novel.
No, I don’t stay home every day either. I’ve been hitting the road doing in-person events which makes it all the more important for me to seize whatever time I do have to concentrate on my mystery in progress. (I also do ordinary things everyone else does, shopping, errands, and try to do something fun with hubby at least once a week.)
To sum it all up, I really don’t have any trouble finding the inspiration to write—it’s making myself use that inspiration to work on the project I need to be working on.
If you were hoping I was going to write about finding inspiration about what to write about—that kind of inspiration is all around me. Articles in the newspaper, overheard conversations, intriguing strangers, almost anything can give me an idea for a new story or a plot thread, or a character.
Marilyn
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